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Daily Archives: November 14, 2014

If things in Jamaica followed the simple logic that applies in most other countries, it would be a singularly boring place. So, let’s be thankful that we never have a dull moment.

Another week, another debacle. This time, it’s the purchase of a tourism entertainment venture for the ‘holistic’ purpose of community development–as the Chairman of the National Housing Trust would have us believe last week. Except, it wasn’t that–as the PM told us in Parliament, this week: it was only the land and a few extra bits. For the knock-off price of J$180 million (plus a bit of chump change, J$110 million, to bring ‘it’ up to snuff–what that means baffles me, but I just saw a pile of manure on my neighbour’s lawn, so maybe it will be to enrich the soil and get some of that speed-inducing Renta yam planted). One of the directors got a little over excited and told us this was the best buy ever. If he’s ever visited the US, he’ll know that Best Buy is an awfully run electronics company. So, the notion of a best buy is a double-edged sword.

Some of the local press would have us believe that all the concerns about what seems like an irrational piece of ‘investment’ of a housing fund’s assets is nothing but party politics. The English have many good phrases, but a clean one would be ‘utter balderdash’. It rolls off the tongue. So, Jamaica Observer, stop the self-serving piety and think about the issues without it always being convenient to think that it’s about orange and green. If an investment for NHT funds were needed, a good broker might have suggested US or UK Treasury Bonds, over even some prime real estate in an area that is on the up-and-up, which, sadly, is not Trelawny. The broker was unlikely to think that a failed tourism venture or the land it sat on–in the northern wilderness of Jamaica–would be a great thing to plunk on. But, spin the wheel. Everything on red. Close your eyes. Government by hope and by grope.

The whole episode has a familiar ring. As someone wrote. They lie. We know they lie. They know we know they lie, but they keep lying, because we don’t do anything to stop them lying. Now, I am not saying who may be lying. It’s just that I went to a good school that taught me some things about thinking. If someone responsible tells me, categorically, that he did something. Then his superior tells me that he did something else. I know that I am confused. They cannot both be telling the truth. However, it’s more likely that the responsible person knows what he did. Now, he might have told his superior something else, but what he said first is the truth. He’s embarrassed his superior, but is not there in the public eye anymore to get more flack. That’s basically what we have. The PM was suckered and forced to keep reading from the sheets of paper–which might have been written on in disappearing ink–and the blah-blahness of what was being said was apparent to all. But, she kept turning the pages and talking.

Then, she got very angry because one of the MPs suggesting that someone was being dishonest–which was scarily obvious. But, the PM took it personally as a slight and wagged her finger and told him “Don’t you try that with me…I’m as straight as an arrow.”

By then, people were cowering in their seats. Miss was telling them off.

But, unfortunately, someone had been dishonest, and the teller of the porky pie was not standing up and saying “Here! Here!” The MPs, in good buffoon fashion, were banging on tables and saying “Hear, hear!” though.

So, we end the week with another bugger’s muddle to resolve. That in a country that is so darned scared of anything that vaguely alludes to bottoms.